Using Chat programs to run games.
 

Has anyone thought about using Yahoo Messenger or MSN Live Messenger and their conference chat feature to run a game? With the photo link capabilities your can also show pictures at the same time... and with the doodle pad quickly draw a rough map... and if you video conference even better.

BUT I would recommend setting up a fake account separate from your main accounts if you do this.

I played a game of the Star Wars RPG Saga Edition using OpenRPG. I really liked the OpenRPG set up, but I just didn't like the rules changes of Saga Ed. My experience with OpenRPG left me thinking that it was great for running an online game when you can get everyone together at the same time.

I'd ...
 

...recomend using oovoo - found here www.oovoo.com

free and upto 6 can chat / videochat at once

For two people its free ... it cost

Video
6-Way Plan
$17.95/month

for 6 people to chat.

I have done it. There were issues with the yahoo chat conference feature and it was as bad as herding cats. It took about 40 minutes to get everyone into the group and some would keep popping out for no reason.

I had good luck when yahoogroups had the group chat feature as well but it worked infrequently but it did work better.

I have had very good luck with the aol chat for real time gamming but, well not everyone is on that server.

I had had decent luck with rondaks portal though, although i haven't used that one too often as most folks just weren't familiar with it.

strange since we've tested it with 4 at once.....free....

I've played in several campaigns run over IRC or Jabber, and I'm currently running a campaign over IRC. We generally don't use any special software, though for the campaing I'm currently running I've written a simple dice-rolling bot.

It generally works OK for us. It has pros and cons. Play tends to be slower, but if you set your client to log conversations, you have a log of everything that has been said. I use pidgin, and have it log to HTML. At the end of the session I can upload the logs to a website so the players have easy access to them.

I believe Inkscape now has a feature where multiple people can work on a single drawing over the internet. I've thought about using that as a map or diagram for online RPGs, but not got around to investigating it properly.